


for better, for worse

by mintakas



Series: intrepid hearts [3]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Blind Ignis Scientia, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Smut, Gladnis, Happy Ending, M/M, Smut, basically just a vignette into life after the darkness, honestly these 2 as dumb boyfriends live rent free in my head 24/7, i love to suffer so i always make them kind of sad lmao, post chapter 10, pre nocts return, wowee another angst featuring the 2 biggest babies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-01
Updated: 2020-12-01
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:08:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,320
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27824263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mintakas/pseuds/mintakas
Summary: “Do you think maybe enough is enough for tonight?” Gladio asks him, lacing up his boots despite hoping Ignis might give in. It’s futile, but he still tries. Ignis pulls on his gloves, stretches his fingers against the taut material.“There is still an issue of the Nagarani at the intersection, is there not?”Gladio frowns. “Well, yes, but it’ll still be there tomorrow.”In that tell tale way of his, Ignis arches a delicate brow,of course you know this isn’t really up for discussion, my love?“That is, in and of itself, the problem.”
Relationships: Gladiolus Amicitia/Ignis Scientia
Series: intrepid hearts [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2042911
Comments: 3
Kudos: 33





	for better, for worse

**Author's Note:**

> ooooooohhh wowweee! so heres this  
> i havent been writing much recently cus work is killing me and also like. no inspiration the world has rly been getting me down lol
> 
> if you like this lil story, this is the third work in my intrepid hearts series check out the others maybe idk
> 
> let me know if you loved or hated it if you like xxx
> 
> hope everyone is safe and healthy!!!
> 
> enjoy  
> 

Gladio first tells Ignis’ he loves him precisely nineteen days into the darkness. _I love you, did you know?_ he says, and Ignis smiles. _I rather thought it went without saying._

It does. It's like the words start a fire in Gladio’s belly, though, and he begins to tell him at every opportunity he gets. When they wake up, and when they go to bed. Before and after a hunt. He whispers the words against Ignis’ skin long after the man has fallen asleep. Tells him enough that it becomes a mantra, so much so that he does very little without the words tumbling past his lips and often into the heat of Ignis’ mouth, down his throat and into his lungs, lodged deep enough that they’re stuck there, forever, just in case. 

Even now, seven years in. 2,648 days of nothing but surviving. Missing Noct. Existing, just for the sake of it, for the hope of better days.

For the hope of _light._

The darkness is exactly that. Dark. In more ways than is simply the absence of light. It’s dark in the very pit of their collective souls; thick and insidious, never waning. Heavy, and dense, like the weight of the very sun that they mourned. If the darkness had a voice it would mock them. 

_He’s gone, and left you behind_ , it would taunt. _What is there left for you to defend?_  


And Gladio would cross his arms and puff out his chest and say _each other._

If he’d learned anything these past seven years it was that humans are nothing if not resilient. He instead finds his daylight in the delicate arch of Ignis’ back, or the line of hair dusting sweetly over the hollow of a beautifully toned belly.

Ignis tells him that he’s a hopeless romantic and Gladio agrees. 

It’s all they have left now.

*

Ignis wants to hunt more often these days. Gladio thinks perhaps he’s growing restless, finds more so than not that even the weight of Gladio on top of him does little to subdue his anxiety. Ignis is pragmatic; he knows the reality of the situation in which they find themselves. Knows full well that they could be hurtling steadfast toward nothing but a dead end. Gladio thinks, perhaps, Ignis is slipping. 

“Do you think maybe enough is enough for tonight?” Gladio asks him, lacing up his boots despite hoping Ignis might give in. It’s futile, but he still tries. Ignis pulls on his gloves, stretches his fingers against the taut material.

“There is still an issue of the Nagarani at the intersection, is there not?” 

Gladio frowns. “Well, yes, but it’ll still be there tomorrow.” 

In that tell tale way of his, Ignis arches a delicate brow, _of course you know this isn’t really up for discussion, my love?_ “That is, in and of itself, the problem.” 

Gladio lets his foot hit the floor with a loud thud. “Ignis.”  
There’s the warning. _(“You know I never had a nickname until you, but somehow it feels more me than ‘Ignis’ ever did,” –)_ and Ignis brings his hand to his face, where it lingers for a moment before his index finger rubs absently at the bridge of his nose. A careless action, with little thought, but it’s been seven years and he still does it now and again, even when he’s not wearing his visor. 

“What would you have me do?” 

“I can think of a few things.” 

Ignis huffs. “Honestly, Gladio. You are insatiable.” He licks his lips, and then sighs dejectedly. “And you’re well aware that isn’t what I meant.” 

There’s no use in arguing. Gladio will follow wherever he goes.

“You know you can tell me if you think I’m an idiot.” Ignis is slipping on his visor, and so Gladio shucks his jacket over his shoulders. 

Ignis, an idiot. It would be like watching the rain fall upside down. “I’ve never once thought you were an idiot,” he tells him, truthfully. That was the thing about Ignis – he was acutely intelligent in ways that continually surprised Gladio, perceptive enough to acknowledge his own lapses in judgement. Ignis, for the most part, was self-correcting.

“Perhaps not before.” counters Ignis. 

Gladio pauses at the door. “I _don’t_ ,” he insists. He hesitates, chooses his next words carefully. Ignis has never shied away from the truth, and Gladio wasn’t about to insult his emotional intelligence by shielding him from it now. He sighs, the next words falling from him like a great gust of wind finally shattering the glass of his resolve. “I think you’re tired, my love.” 

He allows Ignis the breadth to tell him that he’s wrong, if only because it feels like the fairest thing to do, and not at all because he thinks he’ll take it. Ignis, like clockwork, breathes in heavily through his nose, and taps a finger against his hip. “You’re trying to chase it all away because you’re scared of what might happen if you slow down. You’re worried because there’s a tiny part of you that thinks this could all be for nothing, so you’re distracting yourself.” Gladio briefly wonders if the bricks and mortar that they shared might actually pity them. 

“An interesting analysis,” Ignis concludes. Gladio lets his fingertips fall away from the door-handle. “But it doesn’t change the facts.” 

“Which are?” tries Gladio, wondering if he should walk straight over to Ignis, pick him up and carry him to bed. Doesn’t, though, because Ignis still has this determined look on his face.

“There’s still a very angry Nagarani blocking the intersection, and I’d like to eliminate it.” 

Sighing, Gladio resigns, because of course he does. “Alright. But honest to fuckin’ Six, Scientia, if you even mention hunting tomorrow I will feed you to the next daemon we find.”

Ignis meets him at the door, then leans up to press a chaste kiss to his lips. 

“How adorably optimistic of you.”

*

It’s a fairly short drive to the intersection in question. The daemon lurking there means that access to Hammerhead from outside of Leide is almost impossible, unless those passing through wish to engage with the giant snake like monster. The last report they had received was from three days ago, stating that there was still only one creature blocking the road, and Gladio sincerely hoped that it hadn’t since recruited any friends. He was tired; right to his core, tired in a way that surpassed just aching bones or barely recovered injuries. It had been the long haul, just to get where they were – and with each passing day Gladio can feel them draw nearer and nearer to an ugly conclusion, clawing desperately at this tiny little slice of life that he and Ignis shared.

It’s as though Ignis senses this line of thought (and sometimes Gladio thinks that maybe the man _is_ psychic, hell, he wouldn’t put it past him) because Gladio feels Ignis’s hand come to rest across his knee. He keeps his eyes on the road but the gesture itself speaks volumes, and Gladio doesn’t have to look at him to know his face is turned right into the wind. Doesn’t have to look at him to know he too is picturing simpler times. 

Gladio blinks back tears.

*

“ON YOUR LEFT!” Gladio roars, but Ignis is one step ahead, executing an aerial cartwheel right out of the path of a bite from one of the Nagarani’s smaller cohorts. (Gladio still isn’t sure how he does it; but after all these years Ignis seems to have adapted alarmingly well to battling monsters without the aid of his sight, somehow elevating his fighting style to realms that Gladio hadn’t seen from him before. Ignis tells him it isn’t in spite of his blindness, but rather because of it.)

Gladio heaves a breath, exhausted – there were _three_ of the fuckers. They’d already taken down two, but that alone had Gladio spent, having already defeated a small army of Chandravarma just a few hours before. And then there were the hunts yesterday, and the day before that, because Ignis was _bored_ – whilst slaughtering daemons and wielding weapons twice his body weight is quite literally his area of expertise, he can feel his energy levels wearing dangerously thin, his muscles burning from the over exertion – and he fucking knew they shouldn’t have taken this on tonight.

Gladio spins, coming down hard on the Nagarani and lopping one of it’s smaller heads right off, and he wipes the sweat from his forehead as it hits the floor with a miserable thud. The Nagarani roars, lunging at him, and he just about evades it’s lethal bite, rolling onto his side and stopping just short of Ignis. 

“Fucking – _told you_ this was a bad idea,” he spits, and then, curling his hands around Ignis’ legs, “I’m gonna throw you.” He doesn’t have to wait for Ignis to agree; all those years of fighting side by side as Noct’s shield and advisor mean that they rarely have to communicate in battle anymore. He picks Ignis up and hurls him over the top of the Nagarani. Ignis spins overhead, sword shearing off another three of the heads that come up to meet him, landing perfectly on one leg and bowing mockingly. 

“It seems to be going well enough, don’t you think?” he jibes, and that’s it, the rest of Gladio’s resolve crumbles away, the final nail in the coffin. The floodgates are open and they have to finish this, now, because he’s not sure how much more of Ignis’ carelessness he can take. He’s about to use the distraction that Ignis has provided to lunge for the main head, but Ignis is – he’s _playing_ with the monster, teasing it, even – letting the thing bite at him and cartwheeling out of the way at the last second. Not even trying to injure it, his hands clasped tightly behind his back – until the monster seems to realise it’s being toyed with. It swipes one more time at Ignis with one of it’s remaining heads, but just as Ignis spins out of the way and lands, the Nagarani brings it’s tail round to knock his legs out from underneath him. He hits the ground, startled, and all Gladio can think to do is lunge forwards, throwing himself between Ignis and the daemon. 

He lands on top of Ignis, blocking the Nagarani’s mouth with his sword, thrusting the blade up and into it’s skull and puncturing his forearm on a long and sharp tooth. He bites back a shout, and the daemon goes limp. Ignis rolls out of the way, and then Gladio yanks the sword from the roof of the snake’s mouth; the tooth tearing free of his arm. He hisses through gritted teeth, moving right out of the way as the thing falls forward, landing face down against the ground where they both had been just moments before. 

Ignis, of course, is all careful hands and muttered apologies. Gladio pushes him back, a wide palm flat against the other man’s chest. “Just don’t,” he warns, retreating back to the car. Ignis follows, but Gladio doesn’t bother looking back to check as he lifts the boot of the car. He switches on the torch hanging from the inside, before leaning in to pull the first aid kit free. He cuts off a section from the roll of bandages long enough to wrap around his arm, but Ignis is at his side, stilling his hands.

“I know you’re angry at me, but it would make far more sense if I do this for you.” He gestures for Gladio to sit on the edge of the boot, and Gladio does, begrudgingly. Ignis says nothing as he sifts the rubbing alcohol free of the box, popping the lid. 

“This will hurt.”

“No shit.” 

He pours a little onto a cotton pad, and then presses the thing against the bloody puncture mark on Gladio’s forearm. Gladio grunts, bites his tongue to stop himself from crying out. It stings like a fucker and he looks up to the sky as Ignis gets to work. He cleans the wound, then wraps the bandage around. 

“Let’s go; I’ll stitch it up at home.” 

Gladio agrees, wordlessly – gets up off the boot and walks around the car, and says absolutely nothing more to Ignis for the duration of the journey home.

*

“You know what, I take it back.” 

Gladio slams the front door against its hinges.

“What are you taking back, exactly?” comes Ignis’ reply, although Gladio suspects he knows full well to what he’s referring. The door rattles angrily in it’s frame; and Gladio emulates its fury. 

“You _are_ a fucking idiot.” He tears his boots from his feet, leaves them strewn carelessly in the hall. Ignis knows by the loud thud after each one hits the floor, _I’m really pissed off at you, in case it was hard to tell_. Typically, Ignis would collect them, stand them neatly by the door, but this time, thinks better of it. 

He listens to Gladio rummaging around in the medicine cupboard. Hears at least two – no, three, different bottles hitting the sink all at once. Ignis pushes the bathroom door open, and listens again; Gladio is clutching the basin, probably white knuckled and staring blankly down into the plughole. 

“Will you sit down for me, love?”

Ignis gestures toward the toilet seat, waits for maybe ten seconds before he hears Gladio move. Gladio has already set the kit aside for him, and Ignis kneels. Deft fingers make quick work of a job that shouldn’t need to be done – while the guilt makes a home deep down inside of him.  


“Seven years –,” Ignis starts. 

Gladio is having none of it. 

“ – seven years, three months and two days,” finishes Gladio. Ignis’ hands freeze, and Gladio snorts. “What, you think I don’t know? You think I haven’t been counting?” 

The question tears through him like a bullet. He finishes the stitches, sets the scissors against the basin with a small clink, and leans back on his heels. “I’m sorry.” 

He hears Gladio sigh. “C’mon, Ignis. If anything happened to you, I… I really couldn’t, y’know. I couldn’t do this without you.” 

“You would carry on.” Gladio’s head snaps up. Ignis stands, long body leaning against the basin, arms crossed firmly over his chest. “There is more to this than you and I, Gladio. You know that. What would happen without us? Do you understand the implications of what you’re suggesting, how short sighted that is?”

Gladio feels his skin bristle in anger. This isn’t the way this conversation is supposed to happen. “If you don’t like it, then don’t leave me with no choice.” 

Ignis laughs – a short, biting noise that has no business coming from him – and pinches the bridge of his nose. “This is getting toxic, and you know that’s not us. Let’s not do this.” 

He waves Gladio off, disappearing into the hall, but Gladio has passed the point of return. The anger in his belly fuels a fire that burns all the way up to the surface of his skin, his cheeks hot and eyes burning. He follows Ignis, all the way into their bedroom, where Ignis sits on the bed, unlacing his boots. 

“So you’re really gonna pull the shit you pulled today and then accuse _me_ of being short sighted?” He lingers in the doorway. Seconds pass in which neither of them say anything, but Gladio understands Ignis well enough to know he isn’t thinking of a counterargument. He already has one, he’s just deciding on whether or not to use it.

“And what of Prompto, hmm?” he asks. He says it slowly, it’s calculated. Gladio bristles. “What would become of him?” 

It’s a low ball. Gladio hates that he’s got a point.  


“I have no intention of dying, Gladio. But I need to know that if something happens, you’ll go on. I need to know that you’ll be there for Prompto. For Insomnia.” He breathes hard through his nose. “For _Noct_.”

Gladio sighs, feels the anger dissipate, bit by bit. “Iggy, he…” _he might not be coming back. He might not be coming back. He might not be coming back._ He plays the words over in his mind several times, even thinks about saying something else. “He might not be coming back.” 

The words are like shards of glass in his throat. Ignis swallows hard. 

Gladio clears the distance between them, gets down on his knees at Ignis’ feet. A sad echo of only a few moments before. Again, he chews the words over, almost flinches at their bitterness. Repeats himself once more, just to get used to the taste.

“He might not be coming back.” 

Ignis doesn’t miss a beat, this time. “I don’t believe that.”

Gladio takes his hand. 

“I think you do, baby.” 

There it is – the fucking horrible truth of it all, the very truth that Ignis has been running from. The ugliness of it makes his eyes sting. 

Without warning, Ignis curls his fist into Gladio’s shirt. Pulls him up, roughly, and Gladio understands exactly what it means. He tastes like salt and coffee, and Gladio licks it from between his teeth, famished. Ignis responds in kind; feeds his hunger with the wetness against his cheeks, even as the little rivulets fall sadly against Gladio’s skin. It doesn’t matter. 

Ignis crawls backwards across the bed, pulling Gladio along with him, never once allowing him breath. Instead, Gladio expels it all, all the way down into Ignis’ lungs, and Ignis briefly goes limp against the pillows, lightheaded. 

The reprieve only fuels him, though. It isn’t long before he is pulling Gladio’s shirt up and over his head, and Ignis pauses. Runs his hands over Gladio’s chest, dips his head to leave letters of love down the side of his neck, each one an apology, each one pregnant with a different sentiment that even he lacked the vocabulary to articulate. 

Gladio undresses Ignis the way the sun sets at dusk; gradually, little by little, and then all at once. First, his shirt, followed by his belt, his gloves, one by one. Then his trousers; which Gladio tears from Ignis’ body, hungrily, desperately.

“Get on your front,” he orders, and Ignis is only too happy to oblige. He lays on his belly, listens with his head propped against his knuckle as Gladio undoes the clasp of his belt, lets it fall to the floor. He knows Ignis can hear every little part, knows that he’s piecing the picture together in his mind. It’s taking too long and Ignis’ mouth waters.

“Patience is a virtue,” Gladio tells him. Ignis had said the same thing only three nights prior, and now Gladio teases him with it. Makes him ache against the sheets. 

Gladio starts by crawling the length of Ignis’ body, dusting feather light kisses up the muscles of his back. So gentle that it sets Ignis’ skin alight; and as Gladio reaches underneath his body, Ignis wraps a hand around his wrist. 

“I don’t feel I deserve such attention today,” he laments, turning his head to Gladio. Gladio licks the shell of his ear, and Ignis moans into his forearm. 

“You started it. What do you suggest, an early night?” 

“You _are_ injured.”

“I still have one good arm. Besides, you are worth any and all pain.”

Ignis smiles. Leave it to Gladio to try and dominate him with a giant puncture wound in his arm. “You are an incurable romantic.” But Ignis feels the way Gladio trembles, supporting his weight above him, and he shakes his head. “Let me love _you_ , tonight.” 

Gladio rolls his eyes, but relents. Moves to allow Ignis to swap places with him, and soon enough, after sifting a loose condom from the bedside draw, Ignis straddles his thighs, bottle of lube in hand. They’ve no patience for nonsense, not this time. 

His fingers slick, he leans back against Gladio’s legs, and slowly inserts a single finger into his own hole. If he weren’t so tired he might draw this part out, because Gladio loves to watch, but the man is yawning below him, and the two have played this game long enough that Ignis knows not to be offended. 

“I’m sorry,” Gladio apologises, and Ignis laughs. 

“Don’t be,” he tells him, voice strained, another finger making his legs tremble. “I too feel as though I fought an army of Chandravarma and three Nagarani today.” 

He hears Gladio chuckle. It sounds like honey and strong coffee, and never fails to make Ignis shudder. “There was a time where that would have been a slow Monday.” 

“Mm, but then we got old.” 

Here’s the thing. It was always so easy. The two of them, in both light and darkness, and Ignis is starting to understand what Gladio means when he says _no matter what_. 

Ignis circles his entrance with the head of Gladio’s cock, red and swollen in his hand. Really wants to tease him because fuck is it fun on the rare occasion he gets to do it – but tonight just feels a little dopey. He knows Gladio’s chasing that high as much as he is, and it feels almost criminal to deprive him of it in an evening such as this. They’ll make up for it another day. 

He feels the stretch only seconds later, and Gladio’s nails dig half moons into Ignis’ sides, resisting the need to fuck him senseless but only just. Gladio waits for Ignis to adjust, that look of bliss on his face one that Gladio feels he is always seeing the for the first time. It’s like that first gulp of water, the one when you’re so thirsty it feels like you might keel over – you never realise quite how much you need it until that first sip, and then you can’t stop drinking. That’s what it’s like. Ignis is water in the middle of the desert. 

Gladio drinks him in, awestruck. 

“Fuck, Ig.”

Gladio fills him to the brim, stretching Ignis until he cries out. The sound is so loud in their tiny flat. 

When Ignis begins to move, Gladio can see only the back of his eyelids. He still sees his lover, even there.  
“I should let you do this more often,” he chokes, but Ignis is lost; focussing only on riding Gladio so well that Gladio might forget everything that had happened. If only for a moment. Ignis is miles of starlight, and Gladio tears his eyes open to watch, one hand moving to grip the headboard above him. He’s never seen anything so breathtaking. 

Gladio praises him, goads him on so that he knows what a wonderful job he’s doing. Tells him that he’s the most spectacular thing he’s ever laid eyes on. “Feels – _ngh_ , feels amazing, Ig. You’re doing so well.” 

Ignis picks up the pace, if only because he’s _fucking exhausted_ , and his head feels like lead. Just needs to come, needs Gladio to come. It’s what they both need. He is sweating down to the palms of his hands, which slip against the bedsheets, but he recovers quickly. Sets his sights firmly on the endgame. “Come for me, darling.”

It’s barely seconds before Gladio does. He empties inside Ignis, cries out at the ceiling – tears forming at the corner of his eyes so that he can barely see Ignis stroking madly at his own cock. He follows moments after, painting his stomach in thick, white ropes. Gladio makes room for him to lay down, tying off the used condom and tossing it into the bin, and then hurrying away into the bathroom before bringing back a washcloth to clean his lover with. 

He cradles Ignis, litters his face in kisses. 

“Such a wonderful job, baby.” 

They lay there, for a while, breathing each other’s air. Ignis feels light, like someone had filled him with helium, and the sensation lulls him in and out of consciousness for some time. Never really asleep, for some reason that feels misplaced. 

It’s not until he feels Gladio’s fingers begin to stroke through his hair that the realisation hits him like a freight train, knocks the air from his lungs. 

He sits bolt upright, and Gladio jumps. “Something wrong?” he asks, shifting to lean against the pillows. Ignis moves across their bed, pulls open the bedside draw, and rummages through it’s contents. He knows it’s in here somewhere. 

Eventually, he sifts it free, and brandishes it to Gladio. It’s a tiny wooden box, sealed shut with a blue string tied into a bow. 

Gladio doesn’t move.

“I had the idea some time ago now,” Ignis starts, the box heavy in his palm. “I suppose you could say I was waiting for the right moment.” He pulls at the string until the bow unfurls. “Well. This seems as good a moment as any.”

Having forgotten how to breathe, Gladio clears his throat, absolutely dumbfounded. “Is this what I think it is?”

Ignis opens the box to reveal a single silver band.  
It doesn’t mean anything, not really. No one has been married since the darkness came. 

“It’s nothing much. Really only a piece of steel that I managed to fashion into something that I hope vaguely resembles a ring.” It didn’t matter what it looked like, anyway. He couldn’t see it and Gladio wouldn’t care. “For better or for worse, like you always say.”

Gladio knows exactly what that means. The gravity of it leaves him breathless. Ignis gestures for his hand, and Gladio obliges.

It fits, only just. 

“Marrying you would be the greatest honour of my life,” says Ignis. “Even if it’s only for us. It doesn’t matter, not really. As long as we know.” 

Gladio stares at the ring. 

And here Ignis was calling _him_ the incurable romantic. 

What a sap.

“For better or for worse,” Gladio agrees.


End file.
